Investigators at the Chinese Academy of Sciences, the International Society of Zoological Sciences, and other centers describe domestication-related genes and pathways in inbred mice for a paper in Genome Biology. With whole-genome sequencing on three dozen inbred mouse strains and as many wild mouse strains, the team tracked down 339 positively selected genes (PSGs), which were analyzed further with protein structure predictions and published transcriptome data on multiple mouse tissues. Along with enhanced brain tissue expression for roughly one-third of the genes, the authors saw an overall overrepresentation of nervous system-related genes in the PSG set as well as nervous system and/or behavioral shifts at least 125 previously described gene knockout mouse models. "The analysis shows [that] the positively-selected genes are closely associated with behavior and the nervous system in mice," the authors report, adding that findings from the current study "provide valuable cues for studying physiology and behaviors of animals using mouse models."